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The Great Vowel Shift was a massive sound change
affecting the long vowels of English during
the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries. Basically, the long vowels shifted
upwards; that is, a vowel that used to be pronounced in one place in the
mouth would be pronounced in a different place, higher up in the mouth.
The Great Vowel Shift has had long-term implications for, among other things,
orthography, the teaching of reading, and the understanding of any English-language
text written before or during the Shift. Any standard history of the English
language textbook (see our sources) will
have a discussion of the GVS. This page gives just a quick overview; our
interactive See and Hear page adds sound and
animation to give you a better sense of how this all works.
What is this trapezoid? | What do these funny letters mean? For another text-based introduction to the GVS, see the Great
Vowel Shift section of the Geoffrey
Chaucer Website.
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Copyleft © Melinda J. Menzer 2000 |